Quick Action Part 28

XIX

He fell into step beside her, and they walked up from the little cover through the beach-grapes and out among the scrubby dunes, where in the heated silence the perfume of sweet-bay and pines mingled with the odour of the sea.

Everywhere the great sulphur-coloured b.u.t.terflies were flying, making gorgeous combinations with the smaller, orange b.u.t.terflies and the great, velvet-winged Palamedes swallow-tail.

Lizards frisked and raced away before them, emerald tinted, green with sky-blue tails, grey and red; the little gophers scurried into their burrows along the tangled hammock's edges. Over the palm-trees' feathery crests sailed a black vulture, its palmated wing-tips spread like inky fingers against the blue. Somewhere in the saw-gra.s.s a bittern boomed and boomed; and the seagulls' clamour rang incessantly above the thunder of the surf.

"I wonder," she murmured, "whether my sunburn makes me drowsy."

"It's the climate. You'll feel sleepy for a week before you are acclimated," he said.... "Why don't you put down the puppy and let him follow?"

She did so; and the little creature frisked and leaped and padded joyously about among the bayberry bushes, already possessed with the canine determination to investigate all the alluring smells in the world, and miss none of them.

After a little while they arrived at the bungalow which Constance had chosen. The girl pushed open the unlocked door; the puppy pranced in like a diminutive hobby-horse, flushed a big lizard, and went into fits of excitement till the solitary cabin rang with his treble barking.

They watched him through the doorway, laughingly; then Gray looked at the claim notice stuck upright in the sand. Presently he walked to the edge of the coquina quarry and looked down into it.

Thousands of dollars' worth of the sh.e.l.l deposit lay already exposed.

There were great strata of it; ledges, shelves, vast ma.s.ses in every direction. The quarry had been worked very little, and that little had been accomplished stupidly. Either in the rough, or merely as lumps of conglomerate for crushing, the coquina in sight alone was very, very valuable. There could be no doubt of that.

Also, he understood that the strata deposited there continued at least for half a mile to the westward, where his own bungalow marked its probable termination.

He turned after a few minutes' inspection, and walked slowly back to where Constance was standing by the open door. A slight constraint, amounting almost to embarra.s.sment, ensued for a few minutes, but the puppy dissipated it when he leaped at a b.u.t.terfly, fell on his nose with a thump, and howled dismally until rea.s.sured by his anxious foster-parents, who caught him up and generously pa.s.sed him to each other, petting him vigourously.

Twice Gray said good-bye to Constance Leslie and started to go on toward his own bungalow, but the puppy invariably began a frantic series of circles embracing them both, and he had to come back to keep the dog from the demoralisation of utter exhaustion.

"You know," he said, "this is going to be awkward. I believe that dog thinks we are mar--thinks we are sister and brother. Don't you?"

She replied with a slight flush on her fair face, that the dog undoubtedly cherished some such idea.

"Take him inside," said Gray firmly. "Then I'll beat it."

So she took the puppy inside and closed the door, with a smiling nod of adieu to Gray. But he had not gone very far when he heard her clear, far call; and, turning, saw her beckon frantically.

Back he came at top speed.

"Oh, dear," she exclaimed. "Oh, dear! He's tearing 'round and 'round the room moaning and whining and barking. I'm very certain he will have fits if you don't speak to him."

Gray opened the door cautiously, and the little dog came out, projected like a bolt from a catapult, fairly flinging his quivering little body into Gray's arms.

The reunion was elaborate and mutually satisfying. Constance furtively touched her brown eyes with a corner of her handkerchief.

"What on earth are we to do?" she asked, unfeignedly affected. "I would give him to you in a minute if you think he would be contented without me."

"We can try it."

So Constance started westward, across the dunes, and Gray went into the bungalow with the dog. But it required only a second or two to convince him that it wouldn't do, and he opened the door and called frantically to Constance.

"There is no use in trying that sort of thing," he admitted, when Constance hastened back to a touching reunion with the imprisoned dog.

"Strategy is our only hope. I'll sit here on the threshold with you, and as soon as he goes to sleep I'll slink away."

So side by side they seated themselves on the sandy threshold of the bungalow, and the little dog, happy and contented, curled up on the floor of the room, tucked his blunt muzzle into his flank, and took a series of naps with one eye always open. He was young, but suspicion had already done its demoralising work with him, and he intended to keep at least one eye on his best beloveds.

She in her fresh and clinging gown, with the first delicate sunmask tinting her unaccustomed skin, sat silent and distrait, her idle fingers linked in her lap. And, glancing askance at her now and then, the droop of her under lip seemed to him pathetic, like that of a tired child in trouble.

When he was not looking at her he was immersed in perplexed cogitation.

The ownership of the dog he had already settled in his mind; the ownership of the quarry he had supposed he had settled.

Therefore, why was he so troubled about it? Why was he so worried about her, wondering what she would do in the matter?

The only solution left seemed to lie in a recourse to the law--unless--unless----

But he couldn't--he simply couldn't, merely for a sentimental impulse, give up to a stranger what he honestly considered an inheritance. That would be carrying sentimentalism too far.

And yet--and yet! He needed the inheritance desperately. Matters financial had gone all wrong with him. How _could_ he turn his back on offered salvation just because a youthful and pretty girl also required a financial lift in a cold-blooded and calculating world?

And yet--and yet! He would sleep over it, of course. But he honestly saw no prospect of changing his opinion concerning the ownership of the quarry.

As he sat there biting a stem of sweet-bay and listening to the cardinals piping from the forest, he looked down into the heated coquina pit.

A snake was coiled up on one of the ledges, basking.

"Miss Leslie!"

She lifted her head and straightened her drooping shoulders, looking at him from eyes made drowsy and beautiful by the tropic heat.

"I only wanted to say," he began gravely, "that it is not safe for you to go into the quarry alone--in case you had any such intention."

"Why?"

"There are snakes there. Do you see that one? Well, he's harmless, I think--a king-snake, if I am not mistaken. But it's a good place for rattlers."

"Then you should be careful, too."

"Oh, I'm careful enough, but you might not know when to be on your guard. This island is a snaky one. It's famous for its diamond-back rattlers and the size of them. Their fangs are an inch long, and it usually means death to be struck by one of them."

The girl nodded thoughtfully.

He said with a new anxiety: "As a matter of fact, you really ought not to be down here all alone."

"I know it. But it meant a race for ownership, and I had to come at a minute's notice."

"You should have brought a maid."

"My dear Mr. Gray, I have no maid."